Eternal Dance [Audio CD] Atman

Classical Indian music is uniquely well suited to mergers with modern dance beats thanks to its essential trance rhythms and discursive compositions. But it takes a good ear and lots of panache to do it right. The brainchild of Italian keyboard wizard Victor Ruiz, Atman makes the best of traditional Indian chants and ambience, yoking Ratnabali Adhikari's beautiful, bubbly voice to ambient electronic backing tracks. Befitting the mixed-up subject matter, the songs unfold with a dollop of humor. "I Am" posits warbling female vocables against a wah-wah guitar, synthetic strings, and the spoken English-language hook, "Stop fooling around, transcendental meditation." Kickoff cut "All Is One" works an Australian didgeridoo into the mix more seamlessly than you'd ever imagine. Eternal Dance has softer contours than recent Indian fusion projects like Joi's We Are Three or Brit discs courting bhangra culture. With its heady, sandlewood-scented cloud of ethnic-music samples, wafting keyboards, and trippy beats, it's more like Deep Forest on the subcontinent. --Bob Tarte.